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Orrin Oscar Lutwidge
"You consort with the lamas, and I'll take the sharks — For the Yeti avoids the blue sea. We poor deranged seekers are out hunting Snarks: but this Snark is a Boojum, you see." Orrin Oscar Lutwidge is the pseudo-antagonist in phase 2 of Something in the Sea. A brilliant trickster obsessed with the writings of Lewis Carroll, his clues and puzzles prove to be significant in Mark Meltzer's quest for finding Rapture and his daughter. Early life Born on September 3rd, 1906 in New York City. Little is known about Lutwidge's youth other than him developing an early fascination with Lewis Carroll. It's quite possible that Orrin Oscar Lutwidge isn't even his real name since it may be a reference to Lewis Carroll's real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Career Described by many as a restless polymath, Lutwidge was best known as an inventor. His real passion was building mechanical puzzles but his fiendishly difficult devices never caught on with toymakers. Instead he made a tidy sum developing patented concepts for manufacturing. Another one of his subjects of expertise was the field of cryptography. He authored several books and articles for young readers and even consulted with the U.S government on codebreaking during World War II. According to a message left by Amanda Meltzer, Mark's daughter Cindy Meltzer apparently purchased one of his books called "A Children's Garden of Cyphers". One of Lutwidge's companies, Scarlet Sovereign Import and Export came to do business with Andrew Ryan moving massive amounts of construction material for a Warden Yarn Company (anagram of Andrew Ryan) presumably for the building of Rapture. At some point after the opening of Rapture, the deal falls through on Lutwidge's end. It is unclear if this was done on purpose by Ryan, or was an unintended consequence of his disappearance. Lutwidge begins to deduce that his company was a shield for some kind of secretive project of Ryan's and begins to send a series of increasingly threatening letters to him. Quest for Rapture After his letters to Ryan presumably went unreturned, Lutwidge began a quest to find Rapture. Lutwidge started to associate with other researchers of a phenomenon known as "The Vanishing" which involved the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people after World War II. He was known to never offer any new theories himself and simply go along with the ones of the group he was currently associating with. In a letter to Ryan, he related that the government was getting closer to finding out about Rapture until he threw them off with intentional disinformation. A French heiress named Celeste Roget was getting too close for comfort as well, who was on the trail of her father Jean Louis Roget. He led Celeste on a wild goose chase trying to find a mysterious city called Shambhala, hidden in the Himalayas. This led to all of Celeste's party, save for her, getting killed in an avalanche. Lutwidge always seemed resentful that Ryan never considered him worthy of being one of best and brightest invited to Rapture. More than being stiffed on his business deal, this seemed to bother him more than anything. From a letter to Ryan "It is my understanding that you sought to gather the brightest and the best under your banner: yet you have left this very brightest mind alone in the shadows." And from his journal in the Rubix Tube(quoting Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)''"'No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. 'There's plenty of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table..."All these years, Orrin had been SHUNNED by the Master of Wonderland as if there Was NO ROOM for him. But there was PLENTY of Room!" Lutwidge abruptly disappeared in 1958, leaving various projects half-completed, and vowing not to return until he had discovered "true Rapture". Lutwidge left a series of puzzle boxes and various other clues for whom he called "the seeker"; an individual who would follow in his wake to find Rapture. We don't know exactly how he found Rapture's coordinates, but we do know from his notes in his journal that he did eventually make it there. Lutwidge in Rapture Lutwidge arrived in Rapture in 1958-59. We know few details of his experiences there. In his journal he laments being "late to the party", since "the kingdom had gone to war!". Lutwidge apparently spliced, since he raved about the various plasmid products that he discovered down there, writing a poem about them. He says he was initially looked upon with suspicion but earned the respect of certain people through his "imagination and invention", though he doesn't go into detail. He describes some of the people he meets there as "friends", a term we never hear Lutwidge apply to anyone else. From his interview with doctors with Tollevue, we know that he was a participant in the civil war and lamented the "fall of Atlas" which to him meant that "Rapture is dead... and there are none to raise it." Lutwidge describes Rapture in very romantic terms referring to it often as Wonderland, "I should never have gone... but in going- I never should have left!" Returning to the Surface When the situation in Rapture became too dangerous, Lutwidge returned the surface and started writing a record of what he experienced and changed his identity to RØd Killian Quain. Seeking to share this knowledge with the world, he presented his writings to Lex Harlan of Visionary Wonders who edited his work into a series of stories about an underwater utopia called Utropolis. When Lutwidge learned of Harlan's edits, he attacked him and was placed in Tollevue Mental Hospital. His old enemy Celeste Roget bribed local officials to make sure he never got out. When Mark Meltzer found out that Lutwidge was in Tollevue, he faked violent mental illness to get close to him. Lutwidge was a broken man, quietly sitting in a wheelchair in the corner, his faced distorted and asymetrical from ADAM use. Mark tells him that he is the seeker, the one he was waiting for, Lutwidge, appearing to briefly channel his former self, tells Mark to "take thy grail, oh Parsifal", which was the Rubix Tube he constructed using various scraps found in the asylum. Lewis Carroll Obsession Lutwidge makes many references to the works of Lewis Caroll in his writings. The name Lutwidge itself is derived from Lewis Caroll's real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He uses an alternate alias "Orson Orville Lidell", which borrows the name of Alice Lidell, the real life girl whom Carroll wrote his stories for. His final alias, Red Killian Quain refers to the Red Queen from Carroll's book "Through the Looking Glass". A nearly blank map that Meltzer finds is referred to by Lutwidge as the Bellman's Chart, which is a reference to Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. In this book a character named the Bellman uses a blank map to take the rest of his party on a hunting trip for the snark. Also, the term "the vanishing" is the title of the final chapter of The Hunting of the Snark. Puzzles Full article: Puzzle Boxes Category:Characters Category:BioShock 2 Category:Something in the Sea